Penelope Crumb Never Forgets

The second volume in the escapades of fourth-grader Penelope Crumb begins with a class trip to the Portwaller History Museum, which awakens in Penelope concerns about memory and loss as well as a weakness for well-intentioned white lies and petty crime. Never without her deceased father's old toolbox, Penelope knows all about trying to hold on to those you've lost, but when her best friend, Patsy Cline Roberta Wilson, buys a "friends forever" necklace in the museum gift shop with another girl, Penelope discovers that even living people are hard to hold on to. This sets her on a misguided crusade to turn her closet into a museum dedicated to the people she's afraid of losing. To populate her museum, she finds herself getting into more trouble than usual -- including acquiring and then accidentally breaking Patsy's necklace, which necessitates a trip back to the history museum to buy a replacement, which in turn necessitates retrieving her earlier cash contribution to the museum's donation box. Occasional sketches (final illustrations not seen) help pace the story for young readers. As in the first book (Penelope Crumb, rev. 7/12), the roots of Penelope's troubles parallel those of her grandfather, and they find their best solutions together. Penelope comes more into her own as a character in this breezy first-person chapter book, but sometimes her thought processes and judgment imply that her issues run deeper than yet explored. julie roach